Downsizing may well be a part of that change. Perhaps you want to work a bit less, perhaps you’d prefer a smaller (yet not less lovely) home to make looking after it that bit easier, or perhaps you’re thinking about how you’ll fund your retirement in future, support children through university or buying their first home, or even just unlock some capital from your property to live life to the fullest.

There are a lot of reasons to consider downsizing – or ‘right-sizing’, as may be the case if your family has grown up and flown the nest, leaving you with more bedrooms than you need.

But perhaps the most significant benefit is the fact that you will have an opportunity to find a home that suits your needs now, but which will also remain suitable for many years to come, after retirement and beyond. Importantly, this means you’ll be able to stay in your own home, living independently, for as long as possible without having to move again.

However, it’s not always that easy to find the right retirement-suitable home to move to.

Downsizing, accessibility and community are all key. Many tell us that staying in their own home, for as long as possible, is really important to them. Some are looking to unlock capital from their family homes, and use it to fund their retirement. Most would prefer not to have to move away from their families and friends.

But even this seemingly small checklist of criteria can be really difficult to meet in today’s housing market. We feel there isn’t enough affordable retirement housing available, and the options that are there often don’t successfully meet people’s changing needs as they get older. In fact, we came up against this very problem ourselves while helping our older relatives seek out their new homes when downsizing – it’s why our family-owned business is called Lewis & Scott.

Our Managing Director, Rob Scott, and his wife (whose maiden name was Lewis), both came up against this challenge when seeking out retirement properties for their elderly relatives.

The reason for there not being enough suitable housing stock certainly isn’t because homes can’t be built to see people through every stage of their later years. It’s perfectly possible to build affordable dwellings that help residents live a happier, healthier life, maintaining their independence for longer. So that’s what we’re doing.

With decades of conventional construction industry experience behind us, we decided to do something different – something to help improve the lives of retirees throughout the south-east of England and beyond.

We founded our company to build affordable retirement properties that are designed to support health and wellbeing at every stage of later life, and enable people to stay close to their existing communities.

To achieve this, we’ve devised a completely new model for affordable retirement living, both in terms of ownership (freehold is available, as well as other options), and in terms of design – both the homes themselves, and their nature-rich surroundings.

To find out more about how our unique homes are designed to suit a wide variety of retirement living needs, and how we can offer our properties for sale at 20% below the comparable market value locally, get in touch with our friendly team today via our web form.